I was born too late to experience Apollo 11, though I do trek to Dad's house every time there's some space event. There's something awesome about crossing your fingers and watching a tense Mission Control room do their thing.

A little levity is appropriate in a dangerous trade.

After the Apollo 1 crew was lost, we said that we wore a black armband for a few weeks, and we wear it in our hearts forever.

He who commands an Apollo flight will not command a second one

I remember the moon landings, and Apollo was the paradigm by which all progress was measured at that time. And I knew that creating a true space-faring civilization was both possible and practical. What I failed to realize was that the effort would fail due to bureaucratic inertia and political apathy.

I remember in 1967, when there was that terrible fire on NASA's Apollo 1 rocket that killed three astronauts, my father made pure oxygen and we lit this tiny cup and burned it. Suddenly, we had an unbelievable jet and a fire. You just could see exactly what had happened.

Speaking of photography, while the Apollo 8 crew shot hundreds of photos, there was one that got everybody's attention: a blue-and-white Earth rising over a gray moonscape.

Sometimes a malfunctioning test setup actually gives the tested system a chance to show what it can do in an unrehearsed emergency. During a test of an Apollo escape system in the 1960s, the escape system successfully got the capsule clear of a malfunctioning test rocket.

It's true that Apollo 10's lander was overweight. Late in the craft's development, it became clear that its ballooning weight was endangering the whole mission.

There was a lot of risk taken in the Mercury and Apollo eras, and we don't take those risks anymore. We've designed the systems to eliminate risk, which makes it take forever and cost too much money.