An utter shame that he never got a chance to actually touch down on the moon. IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel. Listening to the calm, cool manner in which Jim and everyone else conducted themselves with while their spacecraft was literally falling apart around them give me chills.
> IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel.
Agreed. One of the best books I've read on Apollo was 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', by Murray and Cox. It spends a lot of time on the engineering and management challenges behind what they accomplished then. One of the book's best chapters was on the enormous team(s) on the ground behind the troubleshooting and problem-solving for Apollo 13.
Godspeed sir