24 America in the 1960’s seemed to be a time just made for a Dickens novel. In many ways, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” As students were taking over administrative buildings on college campuses across the country, another group – many of them, just a few years older than the college kids – were making history in a much different way. “That was the one time in American history where the American people pulled together behind a president’s directive,” says Rick Houston. The president, in this case, is John F. Kennedy who delivered a, “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,” on May 25, 1961 in which the president declared: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space, and ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “And, when he did that,” points out Houston, “the technology to go to the moon did not exist. The procedures did not exist. The equipment did not exist. Most of the people that NASA needed to go to the moon had not been hired.” The people that were hired and became the unsung heroes of the Apollo missions are the subject of Rick Houston’s latest book, Go, Flight! The book was the basis for the new documentary, Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo which is now available on �������������� Houston lives and works out of Yadkinville, but growing up in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s with a name like Houston, he was destined to be fascinated with ������������������������ In his book, he writes about how mission control was something of hallowed ground. “Only a handful of places inspire such an overwhelming sense of history: Independence Hall, Gettysburg, Westminster Abbey, Ford’s Theater, Pearl Harbor” writes Houston in the early pages of, Go, Flight! “Battles were fought, and presidents were murdered at most of these locations.” So, when we spoke with Houston in Yadkinville recently, you can understand his reverence for that room. “I took two or three steps into the room, and immediately, I was hammered by this sense of history,” he told us. “Because, when Neil Armstrong said, ‘Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,’ he was talking to that room. When a crew member of Apollo 13 said, ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem,’ he was talking to that room. The last words that Challenger ever spoke, were spoken to that room.” Bob Buckley Senior Achor / Reporter Fox 8 WGHP Thoughts from Rick Houston NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz
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