“My colleagues and I were lounging in anticipation of this historic event in July 1969 and felt extreme anxiety prior to launch. e fact that we began with limited resources in 1962, and landed a man on the Moon in 1969 was a colossal achievement of historic proportions. We were very proud, but also relieved. A celebration was enjoyed as we congratulated each oth- er as successful team members of one of the most sig- nificant accomplishments of mankind.” You taught Neil Armstrong several Serbi- an words, if I'm not mistaken. You were friends? “Neil Armstrong was a quiet and unassuming yet charismatic gentleman who I met on several occasions in meetings and briefings. He was a very good friend of our Director of Systems Engineering, Milojko Vucelić, who taught him a few words in Serbian.” e famous sentence “Houston, we have a problem” was spoken by astronaut Jack Swigert during 1970’s Apollo 13 mission. However, it isn’t as well-known that you ac- tually received that dramatic message? “After Apollo 13 experienced an explosion in the crew cabin, astronaut Jim Lovell called Mission Con- trol in Houston. However, it was command module
pilot Jack Swigert who actually said “OK, Houston, we have a problem here" Milojko "Mike" Vucelić re- ceived that message. He was responsible for the as- tronauts’ safe return.” e technology of today is incomparable to that of the mid-20 th century, yet there have been no new landings on our planet’s natu- ral satellite. Why do you think that is? “ e Apollo Programme was arguably the great-
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator