James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died, The Associated Press reported Friday. He was 97.

Gerry Griffin, one of four flight directors for Apollo 13 and later director of the Johnson Space Center, told KIRO Newsradio that Lovell was “one of his all-time favorite people.”

“He was not only a fighter pilot, a test pilot, a pioneering astronaut, extremely successful in the private sector. And everything he did after he kind of retired, he was backing space-related things. But the thing that I will most remember about Jim was he was one of the nicest, friendliest, thoughtful gentlemen I’ve ever been around,” Griffin shared.

Griffin said while astronauts can come off as robotic at times, th

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