I was lucky to sit down at the breakfast table with Captain Jim Lovell this morning at 7x24 Exchange, so i got a bit more time to think about what Captain James Lovell's presentation as I heard him tell stories.
What has Captain Lovell been doing since retirement from Nasa?
In 1973, Lovell left the space program to join the Bay-Houston Towing Company. He became President and CEO of Bay-Houston Towing in 1975 and then furthered his corporate experience by joining Fisk Telephone Systems, again as company president. The Centel Corporation acquired the company in 1980 and Lovell became executive vice president. Today, Lovell is president of Lovell Communications; a business devoted to disseminating information about the United States Space Program. He serves on the Board of the following companies: Federal Signal Corporation, GCCUS, and Surgi-Vision. He also serves on the following philanthropic boards: Chairman - Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, United States Naval Academy Foundation; Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International Board and the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.
The presentation was inspiring and a good story, but there are no slides to share.
The Apollo 13 movie of course has made this story famous and Captain Lovell told the story after 11 drafts, the story eventually reached a story he felt good about.
Here is an interview by Reuters of Captain Lovell.
"A 'successful failure' describes exactly what 13 was - because it was a failure in its initial mission -- nothing had really been accomplished," Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, now 82, told Reuters Television in an exclusive interview.
But he hailed the nerve-racking mission, which had gripped the world in April 1970, as "a great success in the ability of people to take an almost certain catastrophe and turn it into a successful recovery."
In researching Captain Jim Lovell, I actually found a presentation by someone else who applied the Apollo 13 lessons to IT, and dedicated his presentation to his Dad who worked on Apollo missions.
"We always were able to solve a crisis as it came up some way, jury-rigging, or doing something to keep our spacecraft going, and finally for a safe landing," Lovell said.
