Christopher A. Roosa is a retired colonel from the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and is a combat veteran. He served in various positions in Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom. He has worked as a senior congressional staffer on the House of Representatives' Committee on Science, as a special assistant on the U.S. secretary of defense's first Base Realignment and Closure Commission, as a political advance person for the U.S. Office of the Vice President, and as director of policy for a NASDAQ-100 corporation. For the last fifteen years he has also worked as an independent contractor for the U.S. government. Jim Lovell is a retired American astronaut, naval aviator, and mechanical engineer. He was the command module pilot of Apollo 8 and the commander of Apollo 13.