Tom Talks: Tom Skilling talks to Captain James Lovell

Any list of Chicago’s most iconic institutions includes the Adler Planetarium–and that’s been the case since it first opened its doors nearly 100 years ago in 1930. I love the place and cherish the years I taught a series of meteorology courses at Adler in the 1980s.

It’s always been humbling to me as a weather forecaster and meteorologist that my work involved peering skyward 10 to 12 miles. That’s the depth of the atmosphere in which most of our weather occurs. By contrast, folks at Adler–and all astronomers—peer light years into the vast Universe … a space so vast, it’s an exaggeration saying we’re even specks by comparison!

To celebrate the Adler’s cultural and educational contributions to the City of Chicago, I had the great honor to sit down with someone with a spaceside perspective like no other – Captain James Lovell, our nation’s oldest living astronaut who flew four NASA missions, including the lunar expeditions Apollo 8 and 13. At 96 years of age, Captain Lovell exudes a genuine enthusiasm for space travel, true grit and, most of all, great humility.

–Tom