Lovell recalled how he and a high school friend went looking for chemicals to launch their rocket and ended up on the doorstep of a chemical company on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.  Jaws dropped as Lovell walked in the front door and announced that he wanted to buy an assortment of chemicals to use as rocket fuel.

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In the early days of NASA, Lovell said the agency had some crazy ideas about who they should put in a capsule to fly into space. "How about stunt men?" Lovell says NASA proposed, until then-President Eisenhower suggested that military test pilots, with their national security clearance, would make good candidates.

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Lovell was one of a group of seven military test pilots who were trained as the country's first astronauts. Lovell said they were an interesting group. "The NASA people used to ask, 'Who are these characters?' when they saw us coming," he commented.

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"The Mission Control people are the ones who got us home safely," Lovell stated. "The movie [Apollo 13] is very accurate on this. We were being poisoned by our own carbon dioxide and the design of the scrubbers [to fit the lunar module] was entirely NASA." Kurtis then presented Lovell with a roll of duct tape, in commemoration of the important role the handy material played in securing the astronauts' return home. "Never leave home without it," Lovell responded.

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Kurtis asked Lovell if, at any moment, he and the crew thought, "We won't make it home." Lovell recalled he and his crew experienced a "low point" when they saw the oxygen escaping. "But we never said anything," he stressed. "We were very optimistic. The first thought you get is, why me? Why couldn't this wait until Apollo 14?" he kidded.