Gene Kranz, whose cool command of Mission Control was immortalized in the film "Apollo 13," will reflect on his more than three decades at NASA in a lecture at the National Air and Space Museum's building on the National Mall in Washington on Friday, April 8.
Kranz, an engineer and former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, joined the young space agency in 1960 as assistant flight director during Project Mercury. He went on to serve as flight director throughout Project Gemini and into Apollo, when he was in charge during the tense first moonlanding in July 1969. The next year Kranz led the team that brought back to Earth the ailing Apollo 13 and its crew, an accomplishment for which he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Kranz later held senior positions during the Skylab and Space Shuttle programs before retiring from NASA in 1994.
His best-selling memoir, "Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond," was published in 2000.
Kranz will deliver the museum's second annual John H. Glenn Lecture, a forum for distinguished figures to discuss the prominent role of space in American life. The series is made possible through the generous support of The Boeing Company.
The program will begin at 8 p.m. in the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater. All tickets for theater seating for this lecture have been distributed but overflow seating is available for a simulcast in the building's Albert Einstein Planetarium. Those tickets are free and can be obtained at any Smithsonian Institution box office, by emailing "lectures@nasm.si.edu" or by calling (202) 633-2398. If space becomes available, overflow ticket holders will be upgraded to theater seating.
The National Air and Space Museum building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is located at Sixth Street and Independence Avenue S.W.