With these words, Apollo 13 mission Commander Jim Lovell inadvertently brought NASA’s Apollo Program back into public focus. In the months since the Apollo 11 moon landing, achieving President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing on the moon and achieving it before the Soviet Union, the American public and government shifted their priorities to other domestic and foreign policy issues. However, when Apollo 13 suffered a near-fatal explosion two days into their mission, the American public focused, albeit briefly, on the journey back home. Through this blog, I intend to place this mission into the context of the broader Cold War and the space race to understand its importance in these major periods of history.