RIP: Milt Windler, NASA Flight Director Who Helped Save Apollo 13, Dies at 94
"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:
Milt Windler, one of the four leaders of Mission Control who in 1970 directed the round-the-clock efforts to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth safely, has died at the age of 94.
Windler died on Thursday, surrounded by his loving family, according to a brief notice posted online.
Named a NASA flight director in 1968 after working on recovery operations during the Mercury and Gemini programs, Windler also led a shift of flight controllers for the Apollo 8 first circumlunar flight and Apollo 10 lunar landing dress rehearsal, as well as the second, third and fourth moon landings - Apollo 12, Apollo 14 and Apollo 15. He then served as a flight director for all three crewed missions to the United States' first space station, Skylab.
"Apollo was such a rapid pace that I don't think people had the chance to think about it very much. It has only become more clear to me later on that we were making history," said Windler in a 2006 oral history interview for the University of North Texas. "You'd do a mission and then you'd immediately turn around and get ready for another mission."
"It was not [a] time for reflection," Windler said.
[...] Later, Windler and all of his colleagues in Mission Control were provided with a dramatic reminder about why you do not celebrate until the crew has stepped onto their recovery ship. For Apollo 13, Windler was named lead flight director.
"What that meant was you did the ascent - the liftoff from Earth, I should say, the launch - and you did the lunar surface activity," he told the UNT interviewer. "But then, of course, after we lifted off from the Earth, when we got more toward the moon, why, the whole mission changed."
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