Hello, I'm Andrew Luck Baker, the series producer of 13 Minutes to the Moon standing in again for Kevin.

This is the second of our bonus episodes released in the week of Apollo 13's 50th Anniversary,

and this one has dropped 50 years to the very day of Odyssey's return to Earth.

This is an edited interview with Flight Controller John Aron,

which Kevin and I recorded at John's home in Texas Hill Country.

If you need a reminder, John was one of the e-commerce, responsible for monitoring the command modules electrical power and life support systems.

And Jean Crants put him in charge of stretching out what remained of Odyssey's mega power reserves to get the crew through the final couple of hours to splash down.

Now of course, no one person in mission control can be singled out or should be singled out as the one who brought the crew back home.

We're featuring John Aron in this bonus episode because he's a bit special.

Have a listen to fellow e-commerce, Sommar Liebergott, and Apollo Flight Director Jerry Griffin.

John Aron is an amazing story from a little university in Oklahoma, physics major.

I wanted to come to NASA long enough to make enough money and go buy some cows, go back to farming,

ended up spending about 30-some odd years, I think, with the agency.

It could be said that John was probably the best flight controller that we ever had.

John was gifted with what is the perfect memory?

Tidetic memory with good common sense. He was something else.

It's like my manager told me one time when I was complaining about how good John was. He says, he says, get over it.

We've all had inferiority complexes about John Aron to suck. Get over it.

But that was our standard was John.

The flight before this, he was my come when the lightning hit us on Apollo 12.

And he came through like a champion there.

Made the right call, we saved the mission. And then 13, next mission, he comes again.

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