Published: Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 8:20 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 8:20 p.m.
Robert Oehl grew up with astronauts for neighbors. In Clear Lake City, Texas, during the Apollo space mission years, Oehl was surrounded by what he calls the pinnacle of human achievement: space flight.
“To say Neil Armstrong lived here and Buzz Aldrin lived there is amazing,” he said, remembering walking down his block as a teen.
Or even passing Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 commander, when he walked around town, to this day tickles him.
“It was an exciting time when America was on top of the world,” Oehl said.
His father, Don Oehl, worked for Grumman Aircraft as a senior field representative in the lunar module program. He also worked on the fuel cells for the Apollo 13 mission.
The infamous flight nearly didn't make it home after an oxygen tank exploded and two of the three fuel cells lost power almost 200,000 miles from Earth in 1970, according to NASA.gov.
His father, along with others in the team, sat in the Apollo simulator to figure out the problem and eventually get the three astronauts home alive.
“Those are the real national heroes,” Robert Oehl said of those in the NASA program.
Now, Oehl, co-founder and director of the Wings of Dreams Aviation Museum, gets to sit in his own simulator and teach the next generation to appreciate and understand the final frontier.
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