Last night, we had our annual meeting for work. It is one of our biggest events of the year that brings our members and members of the community together to celebrate the Chamber's accomplishments, celebrate our city and listen to a national speaker.
Our speaker for this year was Gene Kranz, a NASA flight control director, but more specifically known as the man who was responsible for getting the Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth alive. For a more current reference, think Ed Harris in the movie, Apollo 13.
I was somewhat aware of the Apollo 13 story, but have never really been too interested in space travel. However, after last night, my hat goes off to these men. Did you know that the average age of his team who worked on the Apollo 13 mission was 26 years old??? That is my age!
Mr. Kranz was a great mix of serious and funny and realistic. He talked a lot about how he handled the stress of the job. He was trained as a fighter pilot, so keeping his cool during intense situations was something he was used to. He said that there was a huge amount of trust between the Mission Control team and the astronauts and if they didn't trust each other, they wouldn't have been able to make the tough decisions that would normally take days and weeks in minutes and hours. An interesting thought for the business community during these tough economic times.
After the speech, Brandon and I had an opportunity to meet Mr. Kranz at the VIP reception (we were only VIP because I work there..ha ha!)
Oh yeah, and we organized for the Kansas Cosmosphere to come and make space ice cream!!
It was a fun night and this weekend, I think we're going to rent the movie again!
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