words that would forever be linked to commander jim lovell. >> when the explosion occurred, i thoughtwhy me? and for a little while i couldn't believe what was happening. and then all of a sudden i said well, it is me, and it is now. so what's next? >> reporter: the command module's electricity, light and water all lost. there was no heat source. they were 200,000 miles from earth, and going in the wrong direction. >> did you actually ever think, i might die? >> reporter: well, we thought our chances were about 10%. >> did you really? >> oh yeah. when we realized after we saw the oxygen escaping, that things could be really bad. >> reporter: as the world watched, ground control in houston faced a formidable task. think of a way for the crew to fix their spaceship, test it then write up step-by-step procedures for the astronauts to follow just to get home. >> we immediately went to the simulators to try to do in the simulators what they had to do, in the damaged apollo 13 spacecraft, to get them home. >> we're trying to come up with some good ideas here for you. >> reporter: one was to

[applause] >> last weekend i had the honor at the smithsonian to interview a man named jim lovell. many of you may know of him. he was the pilot on apollo 13. you have seen the movie. i asked him, did nasa know 13 is an unlucky number? i went through the apollo 13. you have seen the movie. i will not go through that. but i really asked him about apollo eight. apollo eight was the first time that any human had ever left the orbit of the earth and had gone into another planet's or being's orbit. they orbited the moon. some of you may remember this. it happened in 1968, at the end of 1968, a difficult year. for doing this, he and his two copilots became the man of the year for time magazine. as they went around the dark side of the moon, they came around and saw an earthrise. no one had ever seen earthrise before. and they saw the earth in its beauty, it's blue and white. no human had ever seen the earth in that picture before. 240,000 miles away. and he put his thumb up and he realized that the thumb, as small as it is, was able to block the entire earth. he realized how small and in

on a grand lovell smith is warning us about dictators and also warning about the unintended consequences of bad public policy and the challenges of national policies that enhances our lives or not. you can go further and argue that politics is not where life happens. here is what i say. legislation and government affect our lives in all kinds of ways, good and bad but we have much to do outside our world. want to make the world the better place? talk to your kids, go on a date with your spouse without checking your e-mail, read adam smith and jay in austin and the dredge report, smile at someone you don't know or even like, be nice to your parents because you can never repay them what they did for you, none of this shows up in gross domestic product, they don't help pay the bills, they are not on our to do list and we don't get the satisfaction of checking them off but we can go by and nothing will happen if we don't do them but i think they are the stuff of life. you might be tempted to say if this has nothing to do with economics but i like to think economics is how to get the most out