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. //

“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. //

“If I did it again, I’d probably try to do something more about trying to pay more attention,” said Windler. “Apollo was — well, all of [the missions] were … bang-bang-bang. You couldn’t enjoy, really, in a way you couldn’t savor it, like maybe it would have been better to have done.”