Hutchinson ? Jim Lovell, commander of the near-fatal Apollo 13 mission, said Monday NASA would recover from the space shuttle Columbia tragedy and continue with space exploration.

“The benefits of what we get from space far outweigh the occasional disaster we have,” said Lovell, who spoke at a Hutchinson Chamber of Commerce dinner Monday, two days after the breakup of Columbia killed seven astronauts.

The 1970 voyage of Apollo 13 was to have included a moon landing, but that had to be aborted after an oxygen tank ruptured aboard the spacecraft. Lovell, who modified the lunar module and successfully piloted the craft back to Earth, was portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie “Apollo 13.”

Lovell said all astronauts understood that space flight was risky business.

“We will be active in space. We will get over this tragedy,” he said. “We will look ahead. We will find what went wrong, fix it, and we will charge.”