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Entrepreneur
11 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Exploration with Purpose: Inside The Explorers Club's Legacy and Mission
You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. In a world driven by innovation and progress, few organizations can claim foundational and future-facing roles, as The Explorers Club. Founded in 1904 in New York City, the Club is a non-profit organization and has stood for more than a century as a beacon of scientific inquiry, global exploration, and human achievement. From the first humans to stand atop Mount Everest to the first astronauts to land on the moon, The Explorers Club has counted the most remarkable individuals in history among its members, not for their wealth, but for their will to understand, protect, and advance the world. As Robert Croucher, Director of The Explorers Club, puts it, "The real purpose behind the organization is scientific inquiry in the field, resource conservation, and field study." It is this deeply rooted mission that propels the Club into new frontiers of environmental preservation, cultural research, space exploration, and beyond. Its members have led efforts that directly influenced modern climate science, ocean conservation, space exploration, and wildlife conservation. Right to left David Dolan, Head of Development of the Explorers Club (recipient of the Sweeney Medal) Trevor Wallace (New Explorers Award), Apollo astronaut Captain Jim Lovell (Explorers Medal), Jeff Bezos (Buzz Aldrin Award) Dr. Gino Caspari (New Explorers Award) Dr. Edie Widder (Citation of Merit). (Source: The Explorers Club) The collaboration across people, projects, and purpose is what creates such tangible change. Croucher says, "We are a mission-driven society that raises capital, awards grants, and supports exploration wherever it's needed most." Whether through partnerships with purpose-driven corporations or through its elite but merit-based membership structure, the Club focuses its influence and resources where they matter most. A shining example is the Club's long-standing collaboration with Rolex. Through the Rolex Perpetual Planet program, The Explorers Club has empowered a new generation of scientific leaders to carry out transformative research. Two recent grantees, Katherine Angier and Letícia Benavalli, are emblematic of this vision. Angier seeks to solve a rainforest mystery in the Republic of the Congo, exploring why animals congregate around enigmatic clearings in the forest. Her work could reshape how we understand biodiversity hotspots and inform conservation strategies in vulnerable ecosystems. Benavalli is focused on jaguars in Brazil's southern cerrado. By mapping their genetics, dietary patterns, and habitat needs, she hopes to illuminate pathways to preserve one of the planet's most elusive and endangered big cats. These aren't just field studies; they are lifelines for ecosystems, cultural heritage, and the future of scientific discovery. And they are made possible because the Club has developed a funding model that matches donor capital with meaningful fieldwork. Corporate partners like Rolex co-fund exploration grants, with grantees chosen collaboratively, resulting in high-impact projects backed by both scientific merit and strategic investment. Beyond financial support, The Explorers Club also builds a powerful ecosystem for its members. Far from being an exclusive social group, it is a dynamic network where professionals from diverse backgrounds, scientists, conservationists, explorers, and storytellers gather to push the boundaries of what is possible. Members gain access to high-caliber events like Monaco Oceans Week, the GLEX Summit in Ottawa, and the Annual Dinner in New York, as well as private talks with some of the most influential voices in science and exploration. "You have to illustrate that you have an interest in the Club's mission, as well as be active in the sector," says Croucher. "It's a simple but effective meritocratic philosophy. Members are admitted not by their wealth or societal acclaim, but by grit, purpose, and proven contribution." Take Preet Chandi, MBE, for instance. Known as "Polar Preet," she holds a world record for the fastest solo ski to the South Pole and is now training for an even more treacherous expedition to the North Pole. She joined the Club not with fanfare, but with a story. Within six months, she advanced from London Patron Member to full Fellow, a rare and remarkable journey. "Her dedication embodies everything we stand for," says Croucher. And the community spirit extends far beyond funding. "You should see people's faces when they walk out of one of our talks," Croucher adds. "It doesn't matter whether you're a GCSE student or a PhD holder, it clicks. Your life feels incomplete without this purpose." The Club offers state-of-the-art facilities, ensuring its reach extends far beyond Manhattan's brownstone headquarters. What ties it all together is purpose. Whether backing jaguar research in Brazil, fighting rhino poaching in Kenya, or empowering polar expeditions, The Explorers Club is not just preserving history; it's making it. As Croucher concludes: "Only by working together, members, partners, and supporters can we build the future this world deserves."
New York Times
16-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
Ed Smylie, Who Saved the Apollo 13 Crew With Duct Tape, Dies at 95
Robert 'Ed' Smylie, the NASA official who led a team of engineers that cobbled together an apparatus made of cardboard, plastic bags and duct tape that saved the Apollo 13 crew in 1970 after an explosion crippled the spacecraft as it sped toward the moon, died on April 21 in Crossville, Tenn. He was 95. His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his son, Steven. The day after the astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise returned to earth on April 17, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon awarded NASA's mission operations team with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In his remarks, he singled out Mr. Smylie and his deputy, James V. Correale. 'They are men whose names simply represent the whole team,' President Nixon said at a ceremony at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. 'And they had a jerry-built operation which worked, and had that not occurred, these men would not have gotten back.' Soft-spoken, with an accent that revealed his Mississippi upbringing, Mr. Smylie was relaxing at home in Houston on the evening of April 13 when Mr. Lovell radioed mission control with his famous (and frequently misquoted) line: 'Uh, Houston, we've had a problem.' An oxygen tank had exploded, crippling the spacecraft's command module. Mr. Smylie, who lived five houses down from Mr. Haise, saw the news on television and called the crew systems office, according to the 1994 book 'Lost Moon' by Mr. Lovell and the journalist Jeffrey Kluger. The desk operator said the astronauts were retreating to the lunar excursion module, which was supposed to shuttle two crew members to the moon. 'I'm coming in,' Mr. Smylie said. Mr. Smylie knew there was a problem with this plan: The lunar module was equipped to safely handle air flow for only two astronauts. Three humans would generate lethal levels of carbon dioxide. To survive, the astronauts would need to somehow refresh the canisters of lithium hydroxide that would absorb the poisonous gases in the lunar excursion module. There were extra canisters in the command module, but they were square; the lunar module ones were round. 'You can't put a square peg in a round hole, and that's what we had,' Mr. Smylie said in the documentary 'XIII' (2021). He and about 60 other engineers had less than two days to invent a solution using materials already onboard the spacecraft. The crisis is depicted in Ron Howard's 1995 blockbuster film, 'Apollo 13,' starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Lovell, Kevin Bacon as Mr. Swigert and Bill Paxton as Mr. Haise. Onscreen, a character inspired by Mr. Smylie dramatically dumps rubber tubes, garment bags, duct tape and other materials onto a table. 'The people upstairs handed us this one,' the character says, 'and we gotta come through.' In reality, the engineers printed a supply list of the equipment that was onboard. Their ingenious solution: an adapter made of two lithium hydroxide canisters from the command module, plastic bags used for garments, cardboard from the cover of the flight plan, a spacesuit hose and a roll of gray duct tape. 'If you're a Southern boy, if it moves and it's not supposed to, you use duct tape,' Mr. Smylie said in the documentary. 'That's where we were. We had duct tape, and we had to tape it in a way that we could hook the environmental control system hose to the command module canister.' Mission control commanders provided step-by-step instructions to the astronauts for locating materials and building the adapter. In between steps, they joked about taxes. (It was, after all, April.) 'OK, Jack,' one of the commanders radioed. 'Did anybody ever tell you that you got a 60-day extension on your income tax? Over.' 'Yes,' Mr. Swigert replied. 'I think somebody said that when you are out of your country, you get a 60-day extension.' The adapter worked. The astronauts were able to breathe safely in the lunar module for two days as they awaited the appropriate trajectory to fly the hobbled command module home. They landed in the Pacific Ocean with plenty of time to file their taxes (thanks to the extension). 'We would have died had their solution not worked,' Mr. Haise said in an interview. 'I don't know what more you can say about that.' Robert Edwin Smylie, known as Ed, was born on Dec. 25, 1929, in Lincoln County, Miss., on his grandfather's farm. His father, Robert Torrey Smylie, delivered ice and later managed an ice-making facility. His mother, Leona (White) Smylie, oversaw the home. After serving in the U.S. Navy, Mr. Smylie studied mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1952 and a master's in 1956. He pursued a doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles, but didn't finish. In 1962, he was working at the Douglas Aircraft Company in California when President John F. Kennedy announced plans to send astronauts to the moon. 'I was a young engineer and just wanted to be there and help make it happen,' Mr. Smylie said in a NASA oral history. He applied for a job at the space agency in Houston, initially working in the environmental control section. He eventually became chief of the crew systems division, which was responsible for the life-sustaining equipment used by Apollo astronauts in space. Mr. Smylie always played down his ingenuity and his role in saving the Apollo 13 crew. 'It was pretty straightforward, even though we got a lot of publicity for it and Nixon even mentioned our names,' he said in the oral history. 'I said a mechanical engineering sophomore in college could have come up with it.' Mr. Smylie's marriage to June Reeves in 1954 ended in divorce. He married Carolyn Hall in 1983; she died in 2024. In addition to Steven, his son, he is survived by his daughters, Susan Smylie and Lisa Willis; his stepchildren, Natalie and Andrew Hall; 12 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren. Mr. Smylie's lifesaving invention was a seminal moment in the storied history of duct tape, the jack-of-all trades tool kit item. 'Duct tape has come to enjoy a kind of heroic and ever more pervasive presence in American life,' Tisha Y. Hooks observed in 'Duct Tape and the U.S. Social Imagination,' the dissertation she wrote at Yale University in 2015. 'From the Apollo 13 mission to the broken basement pipe,' she wrote, 'duct tape is there.'
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Why Astronaut Jim Lovell Absolutely Hated the First Apollo 13 Movie
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise were determined to reach the moon as their craft took off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Two days later, they were simply determined to make it back to Earth alive. The terrifying events of the doomed mission and the ensuing operation to bring the trio home is the subject of the documentary Apollo 13: Survival. According to production company Insight Film, the movie examines the true 'knife-edge, life-or-death drama' that unfolded with the help of archived recordings and testimony from people close to the mission. The survival story of the Apollo 13 mission is now widely known due to the 1995 Oscar-winning movie of the same name. But surprisingly, it took a long time for Lovell, his flight partners, and the ground crew involved to have their tale fairly told onscreen. Two days after the launch of Apollo 13, an oxygen tank exploded, depleting the astronauts' Command Module, named Odyssey, of power and oxygen. 'Ah, Houston, we've had a problem,' Lovell grimly remarked, kicking off a dramatic rescue more than 200,000 miles from Earth that—thanks to blanket news coverage through print, radio, and, most importantly, television—captivated observers throughout the world. Millions of Americans tuned into newscasts for updates, as Lovell, Swigert, and Haise battled perilous conditions such as freezing temperatures and rising carbon dioxide levels. On April 15, Pope Paul VI even led a prayer for the trio's safety. Flight Director Eugene Kranz and the crew at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston provided valuable assistance, calculations, and even helped the astronauts construct a makeshift CO2 filter using duct tape, cardboard, and a sock. With that aid, the astronauts finally splashed down on April 17 in the South Pacific Ocean. The New York Times reported that as many as 40 million people watched their recovery roughly 600 miles from American Samoa. People involved in the operation were feted with congratulations. President Richard Nixon appeared at the MSC (now known as the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center) to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kranz and the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team. Nixon then did the same for the three astronauts at the Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, deeming the mission 'successful' despite the aborted moon landing. 'We are glad to be here, and we are glad to be a part of America,' Lovell said, according to NASA. The dramatic story of Apollo 13 was told on film four years later—and not without controversy. Universal Studios became the first to adapt the Apollo 13 rescue for the screen, but the effort resembled a daytime soap opera more than a riveting survival saga. On March 2, 1974, ABC aired that movie Houston, We've Got a Problem. That the title was a misquote of Lovell became an early sign of the creative liberties the film would take in adapting the story. Starring Robert Culp and Sandra Dee, the movie—made with NASA assistance—took the unusual approach of focusing on the workers inside Mission Control, not the Apollo 13 astronauts. While NASA permitted filming inside its Johnson Space Center facilities and allowed real personnel to appear as extras, the agency stayed out of the project's creative development. 'We did not and do not feel we should be arbiters of what's artistic or in 'good taste,' or not,' NASA Public Affairs representative John P. Donnelly wrote in a memo, adding he was hopeful the movie might 'humanize' the space program. It certainly did little to humanize the three astronauts, none of them are listed as characters, and there are no scenes in outer space. Meanwhile, during the course of the movie, members of the team in Houston grapple with personal issues that played no role in the real rescue—including a heart ailment affecting Culp's character and a custody dispute involving another. The studio explained the changes by saying the network would never have accepted a documentary-style project. It also emphasized the added disclaimers that to point out the movie's fictitious elements. 'What we did was take the basic facts and add additional drama on top,' Universal executive producer Herman Saunders said in February 1974. 'How would you keep people in suspense, otherwise, when they all know the outcome 0f the story already?' Houston, We've Got a Problem is largely forgotten by everyone except Lovell, who read the script and found it to be in poor taste and 'a disservice to the flight crew and ground personnel' involved in the entire mission. 'If one is to believe this story, it was obviously more traumatic to be in Mission Control than to be on board the crippled spacecraft,' Lovell said. 'The Apollo 13 story in itself is an exciting adventure tale without the embellishments found in an afternoon serial program. If NASA wanted exposure of this nature, this story should have been based on a fictitious space flight.' The movie was the only noteworthy adaptation of the mission that Swigert witnessed. He died at age 51 of complications from bone cancer in late December 1982. Meanwhile, Lovell became determined to tell the real story of Apollo 13 and played a critical role in doing so 20 years later. In 1994, Lovell collaborated with journalist Jeffrey Kluger on the autobiographical book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. This novel would serve as the inspiration for director Ron Howard's eponymous 1995 blockbuster Apollo 13 about the doomed mission. From the get-go, Lovell consulted on the movie to make it as realistic as possible. He even requested that actor Kevin Costner, who bore a striking physical resemblance, play him onscreen. The role eventually went to Tom Hanks, with Bill Paxton playing Haise, Kevin Bacon portraying Swigert, and Ed Harris in the critical part of Kranz. Lovell personally helped Hanks prepare for the movie, welcoming the Forrest Gump star to his home in Horseshoe Bay, Texas, and flying him in his personal airplane. Hanks also spent more than four hours in NASA's 'Vomit Comet,' the airplane used to train astronauts for rocket flight by alternating between negative gravity and 2Gs of force. Unlike the maligned Houston movie, much more attention was devoted to the astronauts and the realism of their spacecraft. Haise consulted with the sound effects team on alarm and equipment noises, while Space Works Inc. created replicas of the Apollo 13 command and lunar modules 'down to every last rivet and piece of velcro.' The attention to detail proved worthwhile, with Apollo 13 earning nine Academy Award nominations, with wins in two categories. Despite its further alteration of Lovell's famous quote—changed to the now iconic 'Houston, we have a problem'—the movie ultimately earned the astronaut's approval. 'Ron Howard really followed it down the line,' Lovell said, adding another director might have 'put this thing on Mars with David Bowie or something like that.' Since the premiere of the Apollo 13 movie, the real mission has continued to be the subject of much interest and analysis. Haise published his own memoir, Never Panic Early: An Apollo 13 Astronaut's Journey, in 2022 that details his experience and career. Apollo in Real Time, a website launched in 2020, allows viewers to see photographs and listen to Apollo 13 audio transmissions as they happened in 1970. As for the new Netflix documentary, Lovell has already given his full stamp of approval. 'More than 50 years after the mission, the film put me right back in the captain's seat,' he said, according to the Independent. 'Those were the days! Seeing the historic footage and hearing the perspectives of family and friends on the ground truly stirred my emotions. I am grateful the world now has this excellent documentary showing the raw emotions and triumph we felt back then.' All of these projects help ensure the true legacy of Apollo 13 endures for years to come. Director Peter Middleton reached out to Lovell's family before making the new documentary in an effort to 'weave in the experience of our family in a way that would give people a whole new perspective,' according to Jim's son, Jeff Lovell. Jeff told The Telegraph in August 2024 that he gave Middleton access to hours of home videos and personal photographs. 'I hope that makes it a much more emotional, human story,' he said. You Might Also Like Nicole Richie's Surprising Adoption Story The Story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Her Mother Queen Camilla's Life in Photos
